Fo'castle Waltz

Perry rolled that eye at Joe and just went on smoking. He smoked cigarettes very economically down to the last shred and left no butts. His cigarette was down to his last few puffs and he wasn't talking for fear of burning his mouth.

"Hey, lookit," Joe went on. "We're gonna have company. Looks like we gonna tie up between that Limey and those Belgium ships. Oh boy, look at that white paint works on de lousy Limey. Boy-o-boy, some Soogie Moogie—"

Joe was right. Almost all the superstructure, masts, cargo booms, on that Limey were a glistening senseless white—some Soogie Moogie on that stinker, we all agreed. There was another ship with her funnels and upper decks placed way back on her hull. Joe told me that was a Hog-Islander.

"Yeah, they built lots of dem cargo boats like that during the war—at Hog Island. They ship out of Mobile and ports like that in the Gulf and the crews on them ships is always a bunch of Texas guys."

"Well, that's good," I said. "We'll meet up with somebody to talk to, somebody who speaks our own language."

"Who? Dose Texas guys—they don' speak English like I understand. And most them fellers is kinda crazy anyway." And he lowered his voice. "Like that Maverick."

Suddenly Mush let out one of those ear-splitting hog calls almost in my ear.

"So-o-o-i. What da hell you know, lookit there, there's Philip and Sparks down on that pier."

They sure were—grinning and clean as they stood among the crowd of longshoremen, their white shirts (that guy Sparks went for starched collars) were the only spots of clean white in the whole gray landscape—or should it be seascape?

We shouted down, at them and they cracked back until a gangplank let them up on the ship. They were greeted with a lot of backslapping and handshakes. Mush's worry for Philip had seeped through the ship, and we were all glad to see them— even that guy Sparks.

They had taken a train down from Buenos Aires, and had been waiting for us a couple of days.

Later that evening, Philip told us they had been nabbed by the Port Cop and had spent the night in a one-room cement calaboose, until the Pilot had come along with Captain Brandt's letter.

That little cement jail was wet and cold. There was a permanent resident, a ratty emaciated old English sailor who begged them for a razor—he wanted to cut his throat.

He had skipped his ship a number of years back and had gone into the interior. When he returned to the coast the police had jailed him—that was some five years back and he'd been there since.

It seems while he had cavorted around on the pampas a law had been passed. Argentine was ridding herself of the beachcombers that had made her ports a stamping ground for the scum of the seven seas. He said that law fined the ship one thousand dollars for every man who was left behind or deserted. And all ships were responsible for their men and must not weigh anchor from their last Argentinian port unless they carried the same crew they'd brought into the country—or paid their fine.

The Limey tramp that the old Englishman had shipped on, and skipped, sneaked out of port one night without squaring up. This old guy had been thrown into that miserable damp hole of a jail and left there to rot. The Port Cops didn't feed him. There was no money provided for that. He ate only what he could beg from an occasional drunk who was thrown in there with him. The English consul did not recognize his existence. The shipping line that had owned his ship had gone bankrupt. There was no one to pay his fine, so he was left there to die in that calaboose.

Philip had felt awful sad about the old fellow and he (and even Sparks) had emptied their pockets of almost all the money they carried, but he accepted their largesse listlessly and begged for a razor. He wanted to cut his throat.

When Philip had finished the story of the tragic old English sailor Perry gave us a knowing wink.

"See what I mean? You see why there's no sense going on the beach in Argentine?"

21. The Classic Belly Laugh

THERE WAS NO REASON TO SPEND AN EVENING in Ingeniero White—not while there was money in your pocket.

With his stubby fingers Captain Brandt followed through our accounts on the books and then he carefully counted out the sticky pesos, clicked his teeth, and handed us our money with a dry comment—that we hadn't much more coming to us. In fact, he cut the advance of ten dollars which I asked for to six.

We pocketed our money and went up the muddy road through Ingeniero White without giving the town a glance, to catch the train for Bahia Blanca.